Comments (0)Australia Investigates Hezbollah-Backed TV Station
February 10, 2010Sydney, Australia
JTA Wire Service
Australian Jewish groups welcomed a government regulatory agency’s decision to investigate claims that a Hezbollah-backed TV station is in breach of anti-terror and racial hatred legislation.
The Lebanese-based Al-Manar station, which is beamed by satellite via Indonesia into Arabic-speaking homes in Australia, has been banned in Australia on two previous occasions, but was given a green light last July by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
But the authority’s chairman, Chris Chapman, announced Feb. 4 that the regulatory agency was opening a broader investigation into the station.
“We have broadened the investigation from anti-terrorism standards to include racial vilification and hate speech, and we have considerable material to work through,” Chapman said.
Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council director Dr. Colin Rubenstein welcomed the new probe, saying the previous investigation overlooked an advertisement “directly recruiting funds for a Hezbollah-run organization.”
“Al-Manar is well known for its anti-Semitic content, including, most notoriously, material based on the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and the medieval blood libel accusing Jew of murdering non-Jews to use their blood for religious purposes,” Rubenstein said. “Al-Manar is a station owned and operated by a terrorist organization, which airs programs espousing hatred of Jews and glorification of terrorism.”
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry echoed Rubinstein’s sentiments, adding that it would be working with Jewish community groups to make submissions to the Australian Communications and Media Authority by the March 5 deadline.
Ahmadinejad Orders Further Uranium Enrichment
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered his country’s nuclear agency to begin enriching uranium at a higher level in order to fuel a medical research reactor.
The order given live Sunday on Iranian national television comes just days after Ahmadinejad said on state television that he would be willing to export enriched uranium for further enrichment for use in the reactor.
“Please start 20 percent enrichment, though we are still in talks about a fuel exchange,” Ahmadinejad told Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi. “We are ready for exchange. But if [the Western governments] don’t like an exchange, we go our own way.”
Iran faces another round of international sanctions over its refusal to curtail its nuclear program, which Western countries believe is working to create a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is for domestic use only.
“If the international community will stand together and bring pressure to bear on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work,” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Rome. “But we must all work together.”
Ahmadinejad’s statement last week—that sending the uranium to a European country for further enrichment is “no problem”—was an about-face after the Islamic Republic formally rejected a similar proposal brokered several weeks ago by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Under the plan, Iran would relinquish the bulk of the uranium it had enriched to low levels for further enrichment in Russia and then in France to medical research levels before it would be returned. This would also keep the uranium out of Iran’s hands for about eight months.
Six world powers, including the five permanent U.N. Security Council members—United States, China, Russia, Britain and France—as well as Germany met last Friday to discuss Iran, but China has rejected discussion of further sanctions. The United States has said that Tehran’s on-again, off-again willingness to discuss exporting its uranium is a way to delay more sanctions.
Descendant of Marranos Returning to Spain
A descendant of forcibly converted Spanish Jews who immigrated to Israel and became a rabbi is returning to Spain.
Rabbi Nissan Ben-Avraham of Shiloh in the West Bank will serve as emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or Marranos, for the Shavei Israel organization.
Shavei Israel is a nonprofit organization founded to strengthen ties between the State of Israel and descendants of Jews around the world, including the Bnei Menashe of India, the Bnei Anousim in Spain, Portugal and South America, the Subbotnik Jews of Russia, the Jewish community of Kaifeng in China and the “Hidden Jews” of Poland from the Holocaust era.
Ben-Avraham, 52, immigrated to Israel from his native Spain in 1978 and formally returned to Judaism. He is the father of 12 children.
He will teach the Bnai Anousim in Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Alicante and Seville more about their Jewish roots.
“This is a very moving and historic development,” said Michael Freund, founder and chairman of Shavei Israel. “It marks the first time that a member of the Bnei Anousim is returning to Spain, where he was born and raised, in order to help his fellow Anousim learn more about their Jewish roots.”
Freund says there are tens of thousands of Bnei Anousim in Spain who are conscious of their special connection to the Jewish people.
“We owe it to them and to their ancestors to reach out to them, embrace them and welcome them back home,” he said.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.